ONS: 18 November 2013

AFRICA: Libyan Deputy Intelligence Chief Mustafa Nuh was freed by his abductors a day after they seized him near Tripoli airport.

AMERICAS: Chilean socialist candidate Michelle Bachelet won the first round of the country’s presidential race.

ASIA: The Indonesian government recalled its ambassador to Australia in response to reports that Australian spy agencies tried to listen to the phone calls of President Yudhoyono.

EUROPE: The Turkish government announced a mass vaccination campaign against an outbreak of polio in areas near Syria.

MIDDLE EAST: The Israeli government secretly detained a suspected al Qaeda biological weapons expert for more than three years.

TECHNOLOGY: The ‘Twitter Alerts’ service that Twitter launched in September for emergency, relief and charity organizations from the US, Japan and Korea to send out critical messages to opted-in users expanded to the UK and Ireland.

TOP STORY

Syria: Top regime officials in Moscow as violence in country continues.

A senior regime delegation arrived in Moscow to hold talks on plans for a peace conference in Geneva.

UNSG Ban Ki-moon said he expected a peace conference on the conflict will be held in “mid-December.”

The head of the Syrian rebel Liwa al-Tawhid Brigade, Abdel Qader Saleh, died of wounds he suffered in a regime air strike last week.

Belgian Defense Minister Crem said he was “not favorable” to destroying part of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal in Belgium.

Mortar rounds fired on a central district of Damascus killed two people.

Palestinian Territories: French President Hollande met with President Abbas to discuss the faltering Middle East peace process. (AFP)

TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATIONS

Communications: The ‘Twitter Alerts’ service that Twitter launched in September for emergency, relief and charity organizations from the US, Japan and Korea to send out critical messages to opted-in users expanded to the UK and Ireland. (Techcrunch)